Six months in and thankful

yes, it is true. i will be celebrating 6 months on friday the 17th...however my mission certificate...(a small card saying i am called to preach the gospel and it has my start and end date and president monsons signature) says that i finish the 13th.....but we will count from the 17th. 

its also nice to have to hike up a mountain to eat lunch on sundays
 after church and ward council. i have never been so hungry in my life,
 yet so grateful for any food they give you. at least there is a
good view afterwards (above).

in the otavalo zone they went from 16 missionaries to 26 in one transfer and they will be opening new sectors next transfer too. we walk to a chapel about 10 minutes away for district/zone meetings and our house was somewhat of a downgrade. its owned by members, whose daughter lives across the hall with their husband whos the 1st counseler in the bishobric (how do you even spell that word?)...missionaries have been living there for 10 years and it has fleas....but its better than alot of the investigators we teach so im not complaining. today we were up washing clothes on the roof where the place you wash clothes is...its more or less like a big cement cube with a hose on one end and a drain on the other....and all the old otavaleño ladies were laughing at how i washed clothes by hand and tried to teach me...its still a   work in progress. 

here is a picture of the imbabura, an inactive volcano near our house

This week:

i realized alot of things i am thankful for....

it rained on and off from monday to saturday this past week. trying to scale a small mountain via abandoned flooded train tracks in the dark is an interesting daily activity we embark on.

and thus i am thankful for...my boots, my new alpaca fur socks, a sturdy umbrella (hermana aquinos did not last the week) and a small but powerful flashlight that clips onto my backpack (thank you christmas present).

we also found some piglets when we were out contacting. they were
very cute and very smelly and muddy. they seemd to enjoy the rain. 

we also get followed and almost bitten by dogs on a regular basis, so we now cary a mix of rocks and animal crackers to ward them off. 

the rain finally let up yesterday, which was a blessing

the bishop yesterday also asked us to give 10 minute talks, 20 minutes before sacrament meeting.

i gave mine in half kichua half spanish, and even though i butchered the kichua, the members seemed to be quite amused and pleased that i am trying to learn. 

lake san pablo and the side of the mountain that looks
like a heart (kind of, and hardly visible in photos)

today we went to the lake san pablo, we ate greenish hamburgers and harrassed some ducks.  it was a good time.

other than that not too much exciting things happened. were kind of in a slump right now as far is investigators go, but hopefully with double the contacting and member references we will be back baptizing in no time. 

kichua time!

imanalla ñuka familia manda!

manñapani jaua pachapi taitiko dios que kaipuya cuidaquangi

hashta chunga ishkai meses!

ñuka yakini

shuc punga kaman

ñañagu harlos

ps...i got the relief society card, and also the austins christmas card this week...both adorable and gladly accepted! 

First week in Otavalo

With new companion Hermana Aquino who is from Bolivia

otavalo:

the place: otavalo is a big small town. its not quite a city, but theres a hefty downtown area and alot of surrounding villages.

The Plaza de Ponchos market viewed from
 the other sisters apartment

there are a TON of tourists that come to the plaza of ponchos to buy stuff and to hang out with the natives. we live more or less in the city and can walk to our big chapel, the stake center and another chapel in less than 20 minutes. 

an average view of the valley from up the mountain

its in a valley surounded by super green mountains and a big lake on the other side of the mountain. (pictures attached) the sector im in used to be pretty big but they gave one of the villages to elders and split our down town area into two. we still seem to have a fair amount of people to teach. 

the steep, dusty, sometimes with gravel,
 animal and poop filled roads that we walk

even though its green the roads are still SO dusty. i shine my shoes every morning and by the end of the day they are completely brown again. we still have a little bit of the country in our sector which is up a SUPER steep hill that we climb almost every day. there are lots of dogs that like to bark and chase you, but i have yet to be bitten. and our house is right next to a catholic virgin statue thing so its always interesting to walk by the super devout catholics who are praying and lighting candles and stuff on the way out the door.

a hairless dead gineau pig...its whats for dinner.

The food: its pretty much the same as it was in mitad del mundo. i helped take the hair off of a cuy (gineau pig) but still havent eaten it yet. they also eat a thing called katso which is a fried beetle. buttt i missed the katso season by a month or two so ill have to wait until next november to extend my pallet to the insect category. 

the people: the people are by FAR the most amazing people i have ever met.  cultural coolness aside, they are so nice and will help anyone with anything. the members are even more amazing. they have to literally run to the stand to give their testimony because they ALL have testimonies so strong. they also offered to feed us without hesitation when we added 2 more missionaries. our ward mission leader and his wife are SO cool and have charity like i have never seen. they are so willing to help us and one of the other sisters  hurt her ankle the other day. after giving all 4 of us lunch and helping us find people to go to the citas (appointments?) with us, he massaged and wrapped the sisters ankle and offered to take her to one of his indigenous friends naturalist doctors. the wife is going to be my clothing buying guide and their kids are SWEET too. 

the culture: yes, i am starting to learn kichua. i can now (in rough kichua) greet, ask how old you are or what your name is, bare my testimony and pray. other phrases are included as well (thank you, sit down, come  here, im hungry, etc). im trying to write down as much as i can and practice every day. 

me in anaco

on tuesday the sisters put me in the native clothing called anaco and im OBESESSED. i never wanted to take it off. we ran out of time today but hopefully next week i can buy some and learn how to put it on. basically its a big sheet and you just have a woven belt that you tie on super tight, but you have to do it right otherwise it will fall off and you will be pantsless in the plaza de ponchos. there are women here who wear their anaco every day, and spend a TON of money on their hand woven blouses, and crystal necklaces. i will be opting for the more economic options. other than that its a pretty normal ecuadorian town. 

the ward mission leaders daughter.  they start
wearing anacos when they can walk....she is 4
and probably the most adorable thing i have ever seen.

This week: it was alot of running around trying to help the elders and other sisters open their sectors. on tuesday we had lunch with the old bishop, and it turns out his son translated the book of mormon into kichua and their daughter made my scripture cases (who knew?) we had to come home early on new years so i just unpacked and listened to all the crazy fireworks outside. one of our neighbors apparently has a sound system fit for an arena, and i thought our glass was going to shatter because the music was so loud. around 1 am though everything seemed to settle down and i was fast asleep until a presumably drunk man was ringing all the doorbells in our appartment building repeatedly between 5 and 8 am. 

and yes, i wear ponchos now and they
are the most comofortable thing in the world

then on thursday we were out contacting up the mountain and found a family of 13 that took the first discussion and accepted a baptismal invation, but didnt go to church and dont seem to be too excited with the whole thing anymore. but we will keep working with them this week and see what progress we can make. 

saturday i had my first tourist experience. i always wanted to meet a white person on my mission whos a member and be that missionary that daddy always harassed whenever we were on vacation. a nice lady from canada was visiting and had been looking for a church the last 3 weeks but never found one. when she saw us she got pretty excited and i explained to her where the church was and they came on sunday. it was pretty cool to get to speak english. 

sunday was fast sunday and almost all of the testimonies were in kichua, as well as part of ward council. the majority are bilingual and the chosen language is kichuañol (a mix of kichua and spanish) i could more or less follow the testimonies because the church words are all in spanish like gospel, testimony, miracle, etc.  im pretty sure if i stay more than a transfer ill be able to understand it pretty well. but we will see. then today we just went and played volleyball with the elders. we are 26 (English translation "there are 26 of us") in our zone now (the biggest in the mission) and in the valley of otavalo there are around 10 missionaries. apparently the church grew super fast in the 80s and its still a pretty dense mormon population. we cant walk 10 feet on saturday where they have the market and everyones saying "oh hermanitas come here im a member over there" and we dont know the majority of the people..

you couldnt send me the make up brush set? just kidding...make up is the last thing on my mind here. im showering 1-2 a week now a days with no makeup hardly ever. ive been trying super hard to not spend money and ive been pretty succesful so far. in the next few weeks ill be going with a few of the members to buy some traditional clothing but that should only be around 50-100 dollars in total. but we will see

 thats it for now...

hasta kashkama! 

ñañagu harlos

OTAVALO!

IM GOING TO OTAVALO!!!! i have to be at the bus station in a little bit so i dont have much time to write now, but ill try and get back on later. If not BYE and ill probably spend some more personal cash because its colder there and thats where all the indeginous people are that make sweet hand made ponchos and stuff.... sorry not sorry..

(7 hrs later)

just got to otavalo...its amazing. its totally green and a nice mix of farmland and old looking city. but with modern commodites. my new companion is named hermana aquino and shes from bolivia. she has one transfer less than me which means im comañero mayor...what is that in english? senior companion? i dont really know. anyways, our new sector is wayyy small compared to my old one. you can walk from one end to the other in like 30 minutes. apparently our ward is like half kichua half spanish so im PUMPED to learn some kichua. 

as far as the skype call is concerned, i dont know exactly what the rules are but president more or less said you have 45 minutes. if you wanna call mulitple family members go for it. but you still only have 45 minutes..... other than that the last few days have been more or less normal. it was pretty hard to leave the members and investigators but im sure i will come to love the people here in otavalo just as much. apparently its a challange to not gain weight here either so we will see how that goes.

the only memorable experience we had this week was that we had somewhat of an eternal investiagor named rosa. she wants to get baptized but isnt married to the father of their 12 year old child. they have been living together for like 14 years or so but this last month he FINALLY got  divorced and, being a long time member of the church, had his rights taken away because he wasnt divorced and living with another woman  (again, dont know what its called in english) basically one step above excommunicated.  a few months ago they changed their living situation so they could comply with the law of chastity and thus be baptized, and we called mission president to get permission to baptize her. he said yes and we were so excitied she was FINALLY going to get baptized. butttt the day before her baptism the bishop went over and basically said no you cant get baptized because you need to get married first. but he never told us that he cancelled the baptism and the morning of the baptism our mission president called us and said she wanst going to get baptized. it was basically  a giant bummer, but she didnt seem to upset about it and hopefully they can get all their papers in order so they can get baptized. definitelyh the first time a bishop has cancelled the baptism a day before...

other than transfers and the cancelled baptism there isnt much news. my camera is being alittle sketchy right now so ill send some pictures next week. 

BYEE

Editor's note: We had a nice Skype call with Kendra on Christmas Eve.  Although we had some technical difficulties it was fun to see and mostly hear her.  
Here's a link about Otavalo with some cool pictures.    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otavalo_(city)

Feliz Navidad!

This week was pretty nuts. we had divisions with the hermana leaders on wednesday, then on thursday after district meeting we had to go back to quito AGAIN so the family could finish up their paper work. they have officially set their wedding date for the 23rd and we've invited the ward to come support them. 

the oña family after stalin (finally) got the preisthood

friday was the christmas dinner which was soo much fun. we met as a zone in the morning to practice for our required special musical number and had to be at the chapel close to the presidents house by 4. we played white elephant, sang christmas carols, watched videos about the nativity, had a mission slide show and ate medicore american food prepared by the presidents wife and other senior sisters. 

Merry Christmas from the zone!

Hermana Muir and I

Me and my companion, Hermana Lopez

i got a little whistle thing thats acutally a magnet from hermana muir and president gave us all study journals with our names on them (pictures next week) i also FINALLY got the covers for my scriptures, hymnal and preach my gospel. 

With the Mission President and his wife

we got done super late and went to sleep with the nurse (hermana berrett) because they have like 15 bunkbeds in their house (they call it the hotel) ... we had to wake up at 5am on saturday to leave from quito to get back to our chapel because we had "the day as a missionary" with the youth that started at 7am.

"The day as a missionary"youth activity 

it was pretty fun but made me realize how hard it is to train. we also had a nice heated discussion in the street with a jehovas witness (they are always looking to bible bash) and one of the youth just shut up down. it was pretty funny. i hope i didnt destroy their desires to serve a mission too much. i was sooo tired and slept so well that night. i also got a nice sunburn (again) yesterday and today were normal though. 

i got a package from kaylee! (thanks bud) so thats her shoutout. im working on another round of letters and packages to get sent in the next few weeks. we have to travel an hour and half to the nearest post office that i know of. we made the brownies today and they ended up alright. being so high up and in such dry climate definitely changes the consistency. it was still fun though. we have our p-day changed to tuesday so dont be worried when you dont here from me on monday. ill get on like 20 minutes early to write (so about 3:30) so we can work out technical problems then for the christmas eve skype call home.

miss yall!

Technical difficulties, no photos

SOOO this week

it was a pretty normal week. we wasted a solid two days trying to arrange the paper work so one of our investigators can get married and it turned out it was more or less a waste of time BUT hopefully we can get them hitched this week. hermana lopez fell down when we were playing capture the flag so now she has a really nice scab. we helped a nice old lady move her stuff from one apartment to another down the street...old people are pretty much all the same....anal about somethings and oblivious to others...thus accumulating alot of junk without any organazation. we helped our bishops wife assemble and decorate their christmas tree and we have the christmas dinner with president this friday. so thats pretty exciting. other than that life is more or less normal. we went caroling again on saturday and the elders decided to take a shortcut and we basically scaled a small mountain a crossed  a ravine during the night time. i thought we were going to die. then it rained really hard. we also went to the christmas devotional yesterday which was more or less exciting. our family of converts (my only baptisms so far) got robbed a few weeks back and literally have nothing so weve been working with ward council to try and get some basic supplies together. hasta lunes! 

My yoke is easy

our neighbor / investagor made us lunch on saturday, it was SOO GOOD

this week
thanksgiving was a normal thursday here, complete with zone meeting and chicken and rice for lunch (just like every day). there was a company selling satelite out of the back of a truck so i got to see a little thanksgiving football which was pretty exciting. i didnt feel too homesick though. i think because it still feels like summer here i dont realize its december.
 then on friday i had a nice spiritual experience. we had a little bit of free time so we went to go look for a reference that a member gave us but the street didnt really exist (or if it does we couldnt find it) so as we were walking back we walked past a street that an old investigator lives on. shes super evangelical and when we explained the book of mormon it kind of all went down hill from there. she said give me a few months to read the book of mormon and then come back. so i figure yeah its been a few months, lets go visit her. so we went and knocked on the door. she seemed a little confused when she opened the door and saw us but she let us in anyways. so we got to talking and she was talking about a few problems shes had lately. i pulled out matthew 11 something about "my yoke is easy and my burden is light" and she started bawling in the middle of it. turns out she was praying to recieve some help from god and she said send me anything and before she even finished praying we knocked on the door. i was like yeah look at me learning how to feel the spirit. it was pretty cool.

then on sunday after church we went caroling as a zone and we played jenga. it was the most exiciting jenga game i have ever played in my life.

then today we played capture the flag (although the latinos dont really understand it and there was a lot of cheating, im still a little bitter about it) and i got sunburned (as usual) it seems like every day we dont do anything i remember to put on sunscreen but then the days we are outside i forget. oh well. 












im exicited for the upcoming week and counting down the days until i can call on christmas! 
love you! 

hermana dozas last day...1 week a 3 days in the mission

picture time

today with our packages!  Mine was already half opened and I couldn't resist the temptation.  we got a new gringo missionary in the ward after hermana doza left and she got a package with reeses so we are going to make reeses brownies next p-day (im super stoked)

Garage clean-out, hamburger contacting, and Beto--the wonder dog

the sisters before transfers last week (tall white girl problems.)

SO THIS WEEK

(and last week since i didnt get to write a complete letter)

the german family whose dad died(who kind of looks like uncle ray) is starting to clean out their garage, where the dad left all his tools and things. but the thing is, its not really a garage. its more like a small wherehouse (i have no idea how to spell that) and its not just like a hammer and power saw....its like huge super expensive tools and machinery (a forklift, a generator, two super old cars, and various other machines) and the son that just got off his mission and the mom and the sister are working to go through all of the junk and figure out what they want to keep/sell etc. (it kind of reminds me of the rhonda situation but more stuff and its all in german) so they had this forklift that they are trying to sell, but they need to paint it. so we helped them sand the paint off the forklift so they can paint it again. it was pretty fun, but we were outside from 8 am to 2 pm in the very powerful ecuador sun...i forgot to put on sunscreen, and needles to say i am officially a redneck. my farmers tan is so strong right now, and my neck/ears are peeling.

Me in orange paint, the sander, and the RM

 

we did divisions the wednesday before last, and hermana norton (our sister trainer who went home on monday) and i went up to calacali. we found a family the first door we knocked and they accepted a baptismal date, but have been avoiding us since. (a very normal occurance) the daughters names is narly. like gnarly. i thought that was sweet.

Narly and family, with Hermana Norton

we also are teaching a family with a dad of 19 years and a mom of 21 years...they already have a 4 year old and an 2 year old (which means he was 15 and she was 17) but they are super cool. the two year old is named jeangrey, after the lady from x-men. latinos really like wahtever english sounding name they can find. 

The zone before transfers

We had transfers on monday, but hermana lopez and i both are staying in mitad del mundo. the other sisters from the ward both left (one went home and one got transfered) and the sent in two new sisters. one of them (hermana velasquez) is training, so we were in a trio until thursday when the new sister got here ( hermana doza) by the time sunday came around hermana doza was totally depressed and is going to talk to president today to try and go home. sooo we might be in a trio again, but we will see. 

 the first lunch of the new missionaries and a sweet garden of the youngwomens president
(they have 20+ types of fruit, half of which i have never heard of)

monday night after we finished up in the offices, we were super hungry and decided to go find some food. so we walked into this totally random hamburger place and started to eat. about 20 minutes later the workers and and the other people eating there said hey were members. so we start talking and the main guy says i have a reference, but its for the ofelia stake. we said well were in ofelia...he says but its for pusuqui....were in pusuqui....but its for mitad del mundo...the reference was litterally 2 blocks from our house. we went by on tuesday to go visit them and they are a golden family...well almost. they dad has a few underlying mental problems and they arent married but they are totally stoked to get baptized! it was sweet to know that the spirit prompted us to go into the restraunt and for the guy to share his reference with us. 

not much else really happend. we had to go an hour and half into quito two days this week, so that chewed up alot of time. the zone got 2 other greenie gringos, both completely awkward with a very thick gringo accent, so we will see how they do. 

beto, the alley dog also got a haircut, he looks like a skinny lion now, but im gonna miss him when i get changed for sure. 

im still deciding what we should do with the money (Editor's note: money from the Chapel Hill ward Relief Society for her to use to help needy folks in her area instead of trying to send her something for Christmas). im thinking about spending a little bit of it for hermana lopez.

hermana lopez and i made a paper chain to countdown to christmas

shes the only member in her family and her family hasnt written her in like 4 months...so i might do something for her. also i might pay for a few marriages for poor families who want to get baptized but dont have the money to get married. anyways ill let you know. 

i dont think were going to do anything for thanksgiving, but we will see. its weird to think its november. it still feels like july here.